Trying to make Sense of the new Bible Sense Search

Fredc said:

Clearly a search for only one of these senses will not render complete results. It seems to me the tagging needs to be simplified and consistent.

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I wasn't aware of this limitation. I'm glad you explained it...it helps me understand why I wasn't getting expected results at times (I had assumed it was my own inability to use the software correctly...which may still be partly true, but isn't the primary cause).

I can see why the separate tags might be handy (searching for prayers that are petitions, for example). But I also see bigger need, as you point out, to have a simple way to search for the sense 'to pray' (for example).

Jeremy Thompson said:

It looks like there are three issues under discussion here:

1. The case of "Father" when it refers to God
2. Cases of inconsistency
3. Cases of wanting to study concepts like "pray"

I'll comment on each in turn.

In terms of looking at broader concepts like "pray", that is one of the goals of the Lexham Theological Wordbook. It has an entry on prayer. The "See Also" section contains lists of senses that would allow you to explore a concept further using the Bible Sense Lexicon. So, that would provide an inroads to using the Bible Sense Lexicon in this way.

Jeremy, Thanks for your reply, but I think you missed my point. The subject of prayer was just an example to illustrate what I see as a shortcoming in the BSL. There are many topics / subjects where that would also apply. My point is that if someone wanted to do a search for all the _____ (prayers was just an example) they would have to know every sense associated with ______ (again prayers are just an example) before they could perform a complete search. There should be a way to identify a broad category of the sense and then drill down if desired. In other words if I want to identify all the prayers (just and example) I can search <sense to pray> and it will return every prayer. I can drill down from there to find only those prayers that are considered begging. 

Fredc said:

There should be a way to identify a broad category of the sense and then drill down if desired.

Yes!

And an exhaustive list of these categories should appear in the search box where search tips appear for some types of searches.

It is probably best for me to back out as well. I am not a semantic higharky (just kidding I know how to spell it) expert either.[:|]

Jeremy Thompson said:

 With that said, though, do you (and others here as well) think it would be useful to have a search like: <Sense CONTAINS pray>? This could essentially find all occurrences of senses where the string "pray" occurs in the label for the sense. 

I think this suggestion would be incredibly helpful. I'm going to reply to Andrew in a minute with another suggestion.

Andrew Batishko (Faithlife) said:

 It sounds to me that your desired hierarchical structure is different than that chosen by the people that put together the BSL. They were attempting to represent certain structures while you are desiring different ones. This is a really common problem with any kind of semantic hierarchy.

I believe the semantic tree that was created has a good structure. I think we need another dimension, another tree that organizes along senses that make sense to group together. So you might have a new branch "Pray" that points to all the leaves that are in disparate branches of the current tree. You may have a new branch "House" that points to all the varied uses of House, even though they might be radically different in semantic meaning.

I know this would be another large undertaking, both in coding and tagging, but I think average Bible study users (raising my hand here) would get tremendous benefit from having datasets that track with common thinking.

MJ. Smith said:

What is necessary for this to work is for you to define the additional semantic relationships you want captured. Otherwise it ceases to be a semantic lexicon.  Or do you mean expanding the currently relationships to allow "multiple inheritance" i.e. removing the hierarchy restriction and allowing networks of meaning? Or put another way "senses that make sense to group together" needs to be defined as to why it makes sense to group them together otherwise it becomes private. By this I mean I group together a Christmas cactus, a Dresden china tea cup and a white porcelain angel - everyone in my immediate family would instantly recognize the category as "things I was given before age 10 by important unrelated women in my life". That is a meaningful group but it is neither semantic nor public.

That said, I believe that the Bible sense lexicon should be a network not a hierarchy and would like to see the kinds of semantic relationships represented expanded.

I am asking for extra definitions and semantic relationships. Perhaps what I'm asking has too large a scope since we could argue of any number of potential relationships--and we'd probably squabble about them too--but it seems like some groupings make for common sense.

Based on Bradley's response, it sounds like a particular sense can have multiple inheritance / networking. So they'd at least be capable of creating trees with multiple origins.

We currently have:

activity -> worship -> prayer (act)

communication -> message (content) -> prayer (contents)

request -> petition (formal) -> prayer (petition) -> prayer vow

writing (product) -> sacred text -> prayer (text)

These are good senses, I don't disagree with them one bit. But when a typical Christian thinks of Prayer, all of the above are included in that sense, so it seems like you need a prayer root that contains all of them but also keeps the established tree intact.

What comes before it? I'm not sure--maybe communication still.

Or, perhaps each one of these little-p prayers get's a big P Prayer before it and it becomes an abstract root that works with <sense Prayer>

activity -> worship -> Prayer -> prayer (act)

communication -> message (content) -> Prayer -> prayer (contents)

request -> petition (formal) -> Prayer -> prayer (petition) -> prayer vow

writing (product) -> sacred text -> Prayer -> prayer (text)

William Gabriel said:

Andrew Batishko (Faithlife) said:

 It sounds to me that your desired hierarchical structure is different than that chosen by the people that put together the BSL. They were attempting to represent certain structures while you are desiring different ones. This is a really common problem with any kind of semantic hierarchy.

I believe the semantic tree that was created has a good structure. I think we need another dimension, another tree that organizes along senses that make sense to group together. So you might have a new branch "Pray" that points to all the leaves that are in disparate branches of the current tree. You may have a new branch "House" that points to all the varied uses of House, even though they might be radically different in semantic meaning.

I know this would be another large undertaking, both in coding and tagging, but I think average Bible study users (raising my hand here) would get tremendous benefit from having datasets that track with common thinking.

The other dimension that we are missing is what is called "contextual domains". What the BSL provides and FL has done an excellent job with are "lexical domains". That is why 'prayer (an act)' and 'to pray' are separated. One is looking at nouns the other at verbs, which has been kept separated. Now, what we are looking for are another set of labels that could be added to the lexical labels which would group these senses together as concepts. In our case "Prayer". I have already suggested a framework for this (see for example for prayer: http://semdom.org/v4/4.9.5.2).

I wasn't aware that the Lexham Theological Wordbook summarizes the senses for that concept. That is already a step in the right direction. And I also found the same to be true in the cultural concept sections. Very helpful. This however cannot be searched easily. And I think that is our main point. How to make these concepts searchable. Would one way to solve this be to add a search query to those entries in the Lexham Theological Wordbook and the Cultural Concept section?

The search ability that has been suggested (CONTAINS) might work too. Whatever FL comes up with I whish that the search can be used in Visual Filters. Please consider that.

Correction: the cultural concept sections do not contain the word senses. This is a separate section in the Factbook.